Clive Owen's New Short Film Is Full of Femme Fatales and Specialty Cocktails

For years, there has been a rumor that Clive Owen is afraid of badgers. He is, in fact, not afraid of them, we can report. The rumor about him not eating biscuits? That one is true. We won't take a stance on the wisdom of skipping out on delicious carbs thanks to arbitrary rules governing cookies and cookie-like goods, but we do know that when it comes to getting a drink, at least, Owen doesn't have a whole lot of rules.

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What he pours in his glass is based on what social function is playing parallel to the indulgence. "I love a great cocktail, I love great wine, if I'm watching a football game I can drink beer. So I can sort of drift around," Owen says. "But I have noticed, because I travel a lot, that there's been a real upsurge of cocktail bars." Sometimes he's exploring a new city, sometimes he's killing time while his wife gets the house ready for dinner guests, and sometimes he's starring in a short film created with director Paolo Sorrentino and Campari.

Just this morning, Killer in Red premiered online. We got to chat with Owen about it, how this work fits into the rest of his career, and where he looks to find hope during these complicated times.

Campari

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The new film—which really is a film, much more than a traditional advertisement—follows Owen as a bartender mixing perfectly selected drinks for the beautiful women that frequent his establishment. One, the titular Killer in Red, is designed specifically for femme fatale type at the center of the story's action. It also seems to be Owen's character's drink of choice, though in real life he prefers a lesser-known concoction called an "Old Pal," a mix of Campari, rye, and vermouth. After all, he is acting.

Owen doesn't have the time to shoot a lot of advertisements. He already has two major releases this year, Luc Besson's latest space opera Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Andrew Niccol's sci-fi thriller Anon. There's more on the way, plus the possibility of returning to the stage in a play. His schedule is packed. But Killer in Red, even with its short length and branding ties, was the right choice for him.

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It didn't hurt that Sorrentino was at the helm of the project. The Italian director will be familiar to film fans, especially those who have seen La Grande Bellezza, which earned him a BAFTA in 2014. TV fans, too: He also created The Young Pope, the internet's favorite new show.

"I'm a very, very big fan of his. So just to see him working close up was great," Owen says. "[Killer in Red] and the style of the film was totally in his domain; we sort of flip back to wild decadent ages so he can really do his thing there. I love the idea of making a short movie that it wasn't just a traditional campaign that was using still images. It was a proper short, a proper, fully fledged movie."

Behind the scenes of

Campari

The benefit of being in a short film is that Owen gets to scratch the itch of taking on a new character and telling a new story, all while not taking to much time away from the rest of his life. It also makes it easier for him to watch. He's notorious for never watching his own work more than once or twice. To be fair, he spends months or years on these movies, knows the stories inside and out, and has a pretty good idea of what they're going to end up like. Well, most of the time.

Back in 2005, he sat down to watch Sin City and was totally blown away. "I didn't know I was in that film," he says. "[While filming] I literally walked around in a completely empty green screen studio with things chalked down on the floor, sitting on a stool, and was told, 'This is going to be some beautiful noir car.' And then I watched the first screening of the movie and I turned to [director] Robert Rodriguez and I just went, 'I had no idea I was in that movie.' He did something extraordinary."

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It was a risk, that level of trust in a director and a concept-driven, CGI-heavy treatment. But Owen went for it. "It's certainly the case that when I commit to something, then I commit. There's no regrets. There's no wavering. I take the decision to step into something seriously, and when I do it then I commit everything," he explains.

"When I commit to something, then I commit. There's no regrets. There's no wavering."

"My work matters to me. So to say yes to something means I'm going to fully engage. And there's never any regrets because I take the work for the right reasons with the people I want to work with. That's not to say that the films are all going to be great, or the experiences are everything that you'd hope they would be. But if you go in with the best intentions you've got a better shot of it."

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As an actor, Owen is always receptive to the energy and movement of the culture around him. As a father, he takes current events personally. He's watching out for the future of the world not for his own sake, but knowing it's being shaped for future generations. Like so many, he sees a lot of what's happening now as reason to be concerned. But he also sees hope.

Campari

"At the moment, things feel very volatile and unstable. You're letting your young ones out into the world, and it's a different world and it's scarier than when I was young," Owen says. "But again, at the same time, that's the biggest fear but it's also the biggest hope. Because it's the young who seem to have a very exciting and positive outlook on what is possible. You just hope the young will be able to turn things around and get everything calmer and more stable."

And if it doesn't feel like things are getting perfectly calm or stable at the moment, it's okay to step away and take a break.

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